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Epic rant from Keith Olbermann against Vikram Pandit. This is freaking awesome.

Classic rant. Olbermann annihilates Pandit.

This is the best clip I've seen on Pandit in 4 years of running the Bail. I originally posted it in March 2009. Put away partisanship for a minute and just listen.

Pandit is sliced and diced. There is frothing and venom. Keith is pissed about Pandit's $38 million salary when he told Congress he was working for a buck.

"What Mr. Pandit got was a new 10 million dollar executive suite for himself and his key associates. In fact, he then accepted a total compensation package for 2008 of 38 million dollars."

"Mr. Pandit, you're probably just a good actor and a damned liar and a con man. But I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume instead, that you just can't tell the difference between one dollar and 38 million of them."

Think big like the banksters, Iceland's approach to the 2008 banking crisis has left the country in a remarkably strong position, if you control the banking infrastructure of a nation, then it doesn't fundamentally matter what government takes power or what policies they implement.
Link: The Corbett Report
By James Corbett

If you want to run the world, it helps to think big. Like the banksters. They've been accused of many things, but thinking small is not typically one of those accusations. After all, you don't create an international standardized debt-based fiat money system that secretly siphons off the wealth of the productive economy for your own private benefit without the ability to “think big.” Would-be global dictators would do well to examine their example for pointers on how to control the masses and manipulate political institutions to your will.

The first thing to note about “thinking big” is that it's not enough to simply win. Winning and losing are for chumps. That implies that there's actually something at stake, that you're actually putting something up for grabs and that there's a chance, however slight, that you'll lose it all. The banksters have managed to perfect the art of creating the illusion of these contests without actually entering them. For the average worker or business owner or investor, sometimes we win and sometimes we lose. The banksters have positioned themselves above the win/lose paradigm. How is this even possible? By controlling both sides of every argument, of course.

There are the standard famous examples of this principle. The five arrows of the Rothschild shield, for example, represent more than just Meyer Amschel's five sons. They represent the very heart of this “thinking big” strategy. By splitting his billion frank fortune amongst his five sons and sending them to found Rothschild banks in five of the main commercial and political centers of old Europe (Frankfurt, Vienna, London, Naples, and Paris), the family was able to transcend the win/lose paradigm. What did it matter the outcome of the American or French revolutions, the War of 1812, the Napoleonic conquests, or any of the other European squabbles of the 19th century? So long as a Rothschild was funding each side of each conflict, they were guaranteed to win. Losing had been eliminated from the equation.

In a similar way, we can see how losing has simply been eliminated as an option for the banksters of our own era. Take the case of Iceland. Iceland is again in the news this month, and deservedly so. Earlier this month, Daria Zakharova, the IMF mission chief to Iceland, finally admitted that Iceland's approach to the 2008 banking crisis has left the country in a remarkably strong position. Despite having rejected every single one of the bankster-endorsed austerity proscriptions for the financial crisis—bail out the banks, honor all debt obligations, slash public spending—the country is in relative financial order and is set for strong growth over the next two years. According to Zakharova: “The fact that Iceland managed to preserve the social welfare system in the face of a very sizeable fiscal consolidation is one of the major achievements under the program and of the Icelandic government.” When considered in the context of the Greek debacle, that just might be the understatement of the decade.

This, then, seems to be a cut-and-dry case of the banksters losing a battle. They wanted belt-tightening, instead Iceland kept its public spending largely in place. They wanted the banks bailed out, instead they were left out to dry. They wanted debt obligations honored, instead the Icelanders told Britain and Holland where to stick it.

But what have the banksters really lost in Iceland? As the very existence of Zakharova's position underlines, Iceland is still relying on the “help” of the IMF itself to the tune of $2.1 billion US. It has not overturned its (oxymoronically named) sovereign debt. It still has a central bank that ties into the Bank for International Settlements framework that undergirds the entire globalist bankster system. Yes, some of the banks in the country were allowed to fail, and public spending was more or less maintained, but the country still suffered a nine-fold increase in unemployment from 2007 to 2010, slipped from the third-richest nation per capita in 2005 to the 20th by 2010, lost 80 percent of the value of its currency against the Euro, and has a combined government debt of 100% of GDP (and rising). This is not necessarily the success story that it is sometimes painted to be. At the end of the day, the banks still have control of the country, so what does it matter if a few local banks went under and austerity measures were not fully implemented?

This highlights one of the key underlying points of thinking big: if you control the banking infrastructure of a nation (or, better yet, the banking infrastructure of the majority of the globe through the BIS system), then it doesn't fundamentally matter what government takes power or what policies they implement. As long as the fundamental basis of governance through fiat debt-based money is never questioned, the banksters will always win.

We can see this in the European example. Much of the financial press hailed Hollande's recent victory in France as a turning point in the Euro crisis, a rejection of austerity in favor of socialist largesse. But what does this mean to the ECB or the banksters behind the floundering Euro project? Does it mean a rejection of the Euro itself or a diminution in bankster control? Of course not. It means Hollande wants to play up joint Eurobond issues for infrastructure projects, or plans to give the ECB and the EFSF greater leeway to operate in individual nation-states. Once again, for the banksters it's not a question of winning or losing, but simply how much they can win and how quickly they can win it. The Eurozone pipe dream continues apace as the banksters fail forward and attempt to consolidate even more power over individual governments even as their shared currency goes up in smoke.

This leads to a surprising corollary: sometimes it can actually be in your interest to appear to “lose,” especially if you can parlay that loss into a gain in power, profit and control. This is known as the “problem-reaction-solution” process. If you, like the banksters, are in a position of sufficient power over media, government and finance, then it is entirely possible to create a “problem” (however real or imagined) in order to incite a “reaction” from the public (usually panic and hysteria) and to offer your pre-engineered “solution” as the answer to the crisis. To better understand this point, let's turn to Hollywood.

In the popular 1999 movie, Fight Club, the main character has a problem. He's increasingly sick of his job and increasingly getting into trouble for his cavalier attitude toward his work and his personal appearance. He knows the solution he wants to achieve: to get paid without working. So how does he go about getting that? He beats himself up in his boss' office.

Exactly how beating yourself up in your boss' office leads to being paid for doing nothing is not immediately apparent, but once we understand the problem-reaction-solution process it becomes obvious why this works. A bloodied and beaten employee (one who has crashed through a significant amount of office furniture, no less) is a problem for any corporation. The obvious reaction to such a situation is a lawsuit against the employer and negative publicity from the media. The simple solution, helpfully suggested by the bloodied and beaten employee himself, is a deal: no lawsuit, no media, no negative publicity as long as he can be put on a retainer and receive his money for nothing. The boss doesn't have much of a choice.

Of course, this is just a Hollywood movie and there's little likelihood of this happening in real life, but the concept is there. The character knows the solution he wants and he engineers a problem that will get him there. Notice how in this case it doesn't even matter if the problem is “real.” The boss in fact didn't touch the employee at all; the injuries were self-inflicted. But the important thing is that no one would believe the boss in this case. Everyone knew that he was unhappy with the employee. Witnesses saw them go into a disciplinary meeting in the boss' office and heard the sounds of the scuffle. The employee emerged bloodied and beaten. Everyone will fill in the blanks for themselves: the boss beat him up. The truth would be too difficult for most to believe, so the boss is left with no choice but to cave in to his demands.

It's amazing what you can learn about life from Hollywood movies.

How this applies to our own political paradigm should be obvious enough. Look at how much power has been centralized in the hands of the federal government in the wake of 9/11 and the creation of the terror paradigm. The creation of the DHS and the TSA, the announcement and acceptance of illegal warrantless NSA wiretaps, the destruction of posse comitatus, and now the passage of the NDAA and the creation of the presidential assasination list. All of this would have been unthinkable before 9/11, but now all of it has been normalized as part of life in 21st century America.

The economic ramifications of this process should also be easy enough to see. Contrary to intuition, the Euro crisis does not undermine the deeply unpopular Euro project, but bolster it. In order for the banksters to realize their dream of full European integration and consolidation under the unelected EU commissariat, they have to “fail forward” with the Euro crisis. Exacerbate the problems in Greece, Italy, Spain, Ireland and elsewhere. Get people to sign on to the concept of “systemic failure” and that none of these dominoes can be allowed to fall lest Europe is plunged into chaos. And through that manipulation of panic, whether realized or unrealized, the Eurocrats and the banksters puppeteering them have the leeway to propose all of their most outlandish ideas: a fully unified and increasingly powerful European central bank with the authority to intervene in the economy of any Eurozone nation. The Euro crisis is not a loss for the banksters. In their rigged game, there are no losses.

And this is the point to keep in mind: the game is rigged. No matter how we play, the banksters win. Sometimes they win big, sometimes they win small, but each time the roulette wheel is spun, the banksters will take their cut. And once again we find that the only way for the people to win this rigged game is not to play it. To remove our savings from their institutional financial framework and store it in precious metals. To help support the creation of local alternative currencies. To support local farmer's markets and community-based initiatives. To simply remove ourselves from the system. In the end, this is the only thing that the banksters really fear, and the only way they can lose.